Here is the way it is supposed to work:
Children are supposed to learn to read by 2nd or 3rd grade, and then they
are supposed to "read to learn" for the rest of their lives. In a perfect
world, nobody would still be learning to read in middle- or high-school.
Unfortunately, we are reminded every day that this is not a perfect world.
Millions of students struggle with reading in high-school and beyond.
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), approximately
one in four students in the 12th grade (who have not already dropped out
of school) are still reading at "below basic" levels, while only one student
in twenty reads at "advanced" levels. Clearly, teaching reading is
not just an elementary school problem. Middle- and high-schools need
to provide interventions and support for older struggling readers.

However, at the middle- and high-school
level, there are several obstacles that make reading instruction more challenging.
First of all, most teachers at the high school level do not consider themselves
to be reading teachers. They have never received training in reading instruction,
and even when trained, their first priority is to teach a content area
(like biology or history). Secondly, it is hard for any teacher to
teach a student to read when she only sees that student for 50 minutes
a day (or less). And third, students who are still struggling with
reading in middle- and high-school are not usually very motivated to learn
to read. In fact, they will often do almost anything to avoid reading
instruction.

Motivation

Michael Pressley described some
of the research he and his colleagues have been doing on reading motivation
in his wonderful book, "Reading
Instruction that Works." He reminds us that children are very
black-and-white thinkers (we all knew that), and when children start to
realize they are having difficulty with reading (which actually starts
about the 2nd grade), they start to think they are stupid. But they
don't want other people to think they are stupid, so they begin to do anything
they can to hide their reading difficulty and to avoid reading. When
cornered, often these children act-out or misbehave -- they would much
rather people think they are "stubborn" or " obstinate" or "difficult"
-- anything but "stupid" (which in their black-and-white world is the only
alternative). They would rather be punished, sent to the principal,
put in the corner, put in the hall, whatever... anything is preferable
to letting people know they can't read very well.

And those behaviors become much
more entrenched as the years pass.

If you have a child in the 7th grade
who is having trouble with reading, you are dealing with a child who has
about 5 years experience at avoiding reading. The things that child
in the 7th grade needs to learn in order to become a proficient reader
are not all that different from what a 1st grader needs to learn, but it
is much harder to teach those things to a stubborn, obstinate 7th grader
than an eager, curious 1st grader.

Assessment

That said, the first step for reading
instruction for older struggling readers is diagnostic assessment.
As with young children, older struggling readers have difficulty reading
for a variety of reasons -- two students may both be reading at the 2nd
grade level, but for entirely different reasons. Ideally, high schools
would regularly assess reading comprehension levels for all students (at
least twice a year), and would further diagnostically assess students who
are reading well below their grade level.

The first step is relatively easy.
There are quite a few valid, reliable assessments for measuring reading
comprehension "levels." However they are not very diagnostic -- they only
tell you whether a student is reading at grade level or not. That
type of test is somewhat useful for determining which of your students
are reading "on level," but it does not begin to tell you anything informative
about those students who are struggling -- you're still left wondering
why they are struggling.

There are a variety of reasons why
an older student may be struggling to learn to read -- the student may
still have difficulties decoding words; the student may have language comprehension
problems; or some combination of the two. Once all students have been screened
with a general reading comprehension test, those students who are struggling
should be tested for decoding fluency (which can be done with a short list
of grade-appropriate words) and listening comprehension skills (to determine
if there is a problem with language comprehension). Based on those
assessments, further diagnostic measures may be necessary (e.g. if the
student has decoding fluency problems, he or she should be tested for phoneme
awareness, word attack skills, and basic letter-sound knowledge.)

As a diagnostic for older struggling
readers, I am favorably impressed with the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading
by Roswell and Chall. It is not optimal, but it is about the best
that I've seen. It is easy to administer, and the test is organized
the way a diagnostic assessment should be. The DAR is published by
Riverside
Publishing Company -- contact them for more information about the assessment.

Instruction

Once struggling readers have been
identified and diagnostic assessments have revealed areas where the student
could use some focused instruction, the school must provide the structures
and resources to help each student to make as much gain as possible as
fast as possible. For students who are only a few years behind their
peers, it is likely that some focused instruction from talented teachers
in their regular classrooms will be enough to get them caught up (focusing
on enhancing vocabulary, comprehension skills, and most importantly, increasing
the amount of time those students spend every day reading and writing;
see V is for Volume).
A team of strong teachers, working collaboratively, can help students who
are only a few years behind to get on grade level within a school year.

Sadly however, often students make
it into middle- and high-school without acquiring even basic reading skills.
While their peers are reading at 7th grade levels and beyond, these students
are still struggling to read 2nd grade material. Likely, these students
will need intense, explicit instruction to develop both decoding skills
and comprehension skills. Certainly they would also benefit from
strong, individualized classroom instruction (the classroom teacher definitely
does not get off the hook with these students -- they are not somebody
else's problem), but supplementary services will need to be provided in
order for these students to catch up.

Students who are reading at a level
3 years or more behind will need at least two hours per day of intensive,
explicit reading instruction with a talented diagnostic reading specialist.
(Caveat Emptor -- I have seen many certified "reading specialists" who
are neither talented nor diagnostic. Make no assumptions.)
To structure the time, schools will probably need to combine several initiatives
-- for example, a student may be required to substitute an elective for
a reading class, and that student may also be required to participate in
an after-school tutoring program.

Other resources

Students slip through the cracks.
That's a fact of life. However, if middle- and high-schools do not
react decisively with diagnostic assessments and intensive, explicit instruction
when they discover a student who is still reading well below grade level,
then there is little hope for that student. If the school does little
or nothing, that student will eventually graduate or drop out, and join
the ranks of 40 million other adult Americans who are functionally illiterate.

When you finish that, I strongly
recommend you pick up a copy of Curtis and Longo's book, When
Adolescents Can’t Read, Methods and Materials that Work. This
is a very short and readable (about 50 pages) little book that provides
a wealth of information about older struggling readers. This is an
outstanding resource.

When students begin to fall behind their peers in reading skill, rapid,
effective intervention is imperative. Because of the Matthew
Effect (see M is for Matthew Effect), if a small
disparity in reading skill is not addressed early, it tends to grow
over time. Young children who enter school with poorer reading
skills than their peers can usually be helped with two successive years
of very high-quality reading instruction. Typically, no extra
intervention is necessary beyond high-quality instruction delivered by
very talented and knowledgeable teachers.
However, some students inevitably slip through the cracks and do not benefit
from high-quality reading instruction in the early grades. Over time,
they suffer from Matthew Effects, and fall further and further behind their
peers. Frustration sets in, and the gap widens ever further until
drastic steps must be taken.
Previous studies paint a very grim picture of reading intervention for
older struggling readers who have fallen significantly behind their peers.
By 4th or 5th grade, odds of struggling readers catching up with their peers
without significant intervention are diminishingly small. By middle
school, no one teacher can effectively accelerate the literacy development
of struggling readers. Instead, the structure of the school itself
must change.
Below, I describe some of the structures in a school that must be brought
to bear on systemic intervention for older struggling readers in middle-
and high-school. With a highly effective reading-intervention system,
it is reasonable to expect that struggling readers will make about 18 months
of growth in literacy skills over a school year when compared to a normative
sample. This means that a student in 6th grade who is reading at a
3rd grade level can be reading on grade level by the end of 9th grade.Assessment
Effective reading intervention begins with a structured reading and language
arts assessment system. Naturally, at the end of every school year,
students should be assessed through a standards-based assessment or state
accountability assessment. And naturally, that data should be used
to inform general instructional and programmatic decisions at the school.
However, that data is woefully insufficient for understanding the needs of
struggling readers.
In addition to the summative (end of year) standards-based assessment,
all students should be given a formative (beginning of the year), standards-based
reading and language arts assessment to assess overall competence in reading,
writing, and language skills. A comparable assessment should be given
at mid-year to assess progress in development and to inform revised instructional
decisions.
For students who are found to be substantially deficient in reading and
language arts skills, additional assessment information will be needed to
make informed, ongoing instructional decisions. Those students should
be given a diagnostic reading assessment battery (e.g. the Diagnostic Assessment
of Reading by Roswell and Chall). This subset of students should have
an intensive reading intervention plan that includes specific short-term learning
goals. Those short-term learning goals should be tracked through bimonthly
progress-monitoring assessments.
All data collected should be synthesized and reviewed in bimonthly staff
meetings. Staff should monitor the progress of all students, and collaborate
to develop instructional and programmatic modifications for students who
are not making sufficient progress in reading and language arts. Time Structures
Struggling readers benefit from additional instructional time to practice
and polish their literacy skills. Time on task is one of the most
influential variables in an effective reading intervention plan. Time
must be created and protected for explicit instruction and for practicing
literacy skills. Every struggling reader at the middle- and high-school
level should have two class periods dedicated to enhancing reading, writing,
and language skills -- one class in language arts and a second class in
literacy skill development.
This increased time allocation for focused literacy instruction has been
shown to be beneficial for struggling readers (Knapp, 1991). There
is an overwhelming amount of empirical evidence linking reading volume (time-on-task)
with reading proficiency (Allington and McGill-Franzen, 1989; Collins, 1986;
Krashen, 1993), but unfortunately, struggling readers in typical schools
actually tend to spend less time engaged in effective reading instruction
activities (Allington, 1977; Anderson, Wilson, & Fielding, 1988; Taylor,
Frye, and Maruyama, 1990). In an effective school literacy intervention
plan, struggling readers should have substantially more reading instruction
and opportunity to practice and refine their literacy skills than they would
likely have in a traditional school setting.
Every struggling reader should participate in a normal, grade-appropriate
language arts class. The language arts class should focus on the standards-based
curriculum that is appropriate for all middle- and high-school students
using an integrated curriculum that supports other content-area learning.
Struggling readers do benefit from the content and instruction provided their
peers in the normal reading and language arts class, and they should not
be "pulled" from this class to be given remedial reading instruction.
The second class in addition to the grade-appropriate language arts class
-- the literacy skill development class -- should be more individualized
(with a small student-teacher ratio) and should focus on the literacy skill
and knowledge development that will most benefit each individual struggling
reader. For example, a student who has not yet developed fluent word-identification
skills would be given intensive instruction in word-identification strategies
and would participate daily in activities that research has shown to improve
fluency, such as repeated oral reading or echo reading (Pany & McCoy,
1988; Rashotte & Torgesen, 1985; Tan & Nicholson, 1997). Progress
monitoring assessments should be used regularly in the literacy skills development
class to ensure rapid development of necessary literacy skills.
In addition to a second literacy course in every student's course schedule,
literacy instruction should be infused within the content-area courses.
Reading and language arts teachers should collaborate with teachers of science,
history, social studies and arts to ensure that effective reading comprehension
strategies are being reinforced throughout the day. All teachers in
the school should participate in professional development in reading instructional
strategies designed to support adolescent struggling readers. This
coherent school-wide approach to improving reading instruction would support
content and domain knowledge and vocabulary development for all students
(Bean, Valerio, and Stevens, 1999).
Two classes of systematic, data-driven reading instruction plus coordinated
literacy instruction in the content-area courses should be sufficient instructional
support to rapidly accelerate the literacy growth of nearly all of the struggling
readers in a middle- or high-school. However, for the few students
who have more enduring reading difficulties, additional tutoring services
should be provided before and after school by highly-trained reading specialists.
The tutoring program should involve explicit and systematic one-on-one instruction
either before or after school for up to 3 hours per week. The tutoring
should be designed to complement the reading instruction provided in the
core classes, but should be much more assessment and needs driven.
Curriculum
A curriculum team composed of the principal and a representative sample
of teachers should be tasked with meeting monthly to review the core language
arts curriculum for the school to monitor it's appropriateness for the student
population. That curriculum team should also be tasked with ensuring
that all teachers understand the curriculum and actually adhere to the curriculum
in daily classroom instruction.
Where appropriate, modifications should be made to the core reading curriculum
to improve it and tailor it to the needs of the students in the school.
However, the curriculum team should be cautioned that a constantly changing
curriculum is rarely effective. New programs and new instructional
materials can create confusion and even strife in a school. Changes
to the curriculum should be taken seriously, and should only be made after
due consideration and discussion. All teachers should be included in
the decision, and all teachers should understand that they will be held accountable
for actually implementing the new curriculum and using the new materials.
In developing the curriculum, particular emphasis should be placed on structured
vocabulary instruction. Most struggling readers come from linguistically
diverse backgrounds, and many also come from low-income households.
Research in vocabulary development indicates that students from linguistically
diverse and low-income backgrounds tend to have more limited vocabularies
than their more advantaged peers (Cummings, 1984; Hart and Risley, 2003).
However, a substantial amount of research on vocabulary instruction has shown
that deliberate, integrated instruction of vocabulary can significantly
decrease the "vocabulary gap" that exists between advantaged and disadvantaged
students (Beck, McKeown and Omanson, 1987; Blachowicz and Fisher, 1996;
Bos and Anders, 1990; McKeown and Curtis, 1987). As part of the integrated
curriculum, vocabulary instruction in different classrooms should be complementary,
with repeated reinforcement of key concepts and terms. Extra emphasis
should be placed on the academic vocabulary that is often key to success
for students from linguistically diverse backgrounds (Cummings, 1984; Qian,
2002) as well as the "Tier 2" words that are critical for successful academic
development (Beck, McKeown, and Kucan, 2002).Additional Literacy Resources
In addition to the core reading materials, supplemental, high-interest
reading materials should also be made available to struggling readers.
Engaging, interactive computer programs that support decoding skills, reading
comprehension, and writing composition should be made available on computers
in every classroom, as well as on computers in a central technology laboratory.
The campus administration should endeavor to secure funding to provide every
student with portable computers with wireless internet capability.
Technology should not be used as a surrogate for high-quality classroom
instruction, but instead should be used as a tool for reinforcement, refinement,
and application of skills. All school-owned computers should have
high-speed internet access, and the integrated curriculum in all classes
should include a component in conducting internet research.Motivation
While most research on literacy development has focused on the cognitive
components of learning to read (phoneme awareness, vocabulary, semantics,
decoding fluency, etc.), most experts in literacy development also acknowledge
that the student's intrinsic motivation to engage in literacy activities
is one of the primary determinants of literacy development. Without
motivation, older struggling readers do not develop proficient literacy skills.
Many older struggling readers develop aversion attitudes and avoidance behaviors
that extinguish literacy development (Anderson, Tollefson, and Gilbert,
1985; Worthy, 2000).
While a great deal is understood about the cognitive domains, less is known
about cultivating motivation in struggling readers. The research literature
in this area is somewhat sketchy, but there is some evidence supporting
a few strategies for stimulating motivation in adolescent struggling readers.
Where possible, instructional materials should be used that are clearly
relevant and intrinsically interesting to the students (Hidi and Baird,
1986; Schiefele, 1999; Sleeter and Grant, 1999). The curriculum
should be built around the state standards, and should incorporate
strategies shown by research to be most effective for developing the
literacy skills of struggling readers. However, the curriculum
and materials also need to be relevant and interesting to the
students. Older struggling readers are more motivated
to engage in literacy activities for longer periods of time when they
feel
the activities are intrinsically interesting or beneficial to
them. Materials and instruction that seem disconnected from their
lives, ambitions, or concerns are rarely effective for enhancing and
accelerating the growth of literacy skills.
Students should also have regular input into selection of reading materials
and instructional activities (Carson, 1990; Turner, 1995). Many of
the instructional resources that are found in high-quality reading programs
are relevant and attractive to struggling readers in middle- and high-school,
but very often students have very little interest in much of the material
or subject matter. Schools and teachers often find they must work
with the students to find other appropriate and engaging instructional materials
that can be used to supplement the materials in the core reading program.
Every year, a committee comprised of both students and teachers should
evaluate candidates for addition to the school library. Students and
teachers will collaborate to make decisions about library purchases, including
books, reference materials, and periodicals. Students and teachers
should also collaborate to develop plans to promote awareness of and interest
in the library materials.
Finally, instruction should be designed to encourage social discussions
of reading and writing activities. Social discussion and collaboration
has been shown to support both student motivation and comprehension of materials
(Hynds, 1997), and may be of particular benefit to struggling readers.Professional development
Every teacher and administrator should be expected to play a role in helping
all students develop mastery of language, in oral, written, and other forms.
However, among middle and high school teachers, expertise in literacy and
language instruction is rare. Beyond elementary school, most teachers
view themselves as teachers of content, not teachers of reading and language
skills. Even highly qualified, expert secondary teachers are often
at a loss when confronted with students who are struggling with literacy
and language barriers. Therefore, literacy in the content areas should
be a cornerstone of professional development for all staff.
Literacy professional development for all staff should focus on effective
grouping strategies for accelerated literacy development (Mehan, Villaneuva,
Hubbard, and Lintz, 1996), reader-based discussion strategies (Newell, 1996),
concept-driven instruction and questioning techniques (Ruddell, 1996), and
other effective content-area reading strategies.
Delivering and coordinating this professional development (and facilitating
all of the other components described above) is a full-time job. So,
a full-time literacy coach should be staffed to lead this effort.
A literacy coach is a reading specialist who takes leadership and responsibility
for improving literacy achievement in a school (Wren, 2005). The literacy
coach provides guidance and support to teachers trying to learn new literacy
concepts and strategies. The literacy coach helps teachers to plan
effective instruction. And the literacy coach works closely with the
school leaders to ensure that the school continuously improves in their efforts
to provide high-quality reading instruction to all students.

A Question from a Reader on the Discussion Forum:

I have
some middle and high school teachers whom I expect will have
some questions (in other words, "resistance") regarding the
whole idea about older students needing to establish
precurser skills in phonics (accuracy, automaticity). Any
advice?

I have advice, but I don't think you'll like it.

When I work with secondary teachers, I tell them that every teacher
needs to be at least aware of the cognitive processes involved in
learning to read. Reading is so important, every teacher should
at least understand it. They should be armed with information and
skills because they never know what kind of impact they can have or
what kind of "teachable moment" will present itself.

However, I also tell secondary teachers -- content-area teachers --
that what I want them doing is focusing on fluency, vocabulary, and
comprehension within the content areas. Every day. I tell
them that I don't expect all secondary, "content-area" teachers to
teach basic reading skills, but I do expect them to use effective
strategies for teaching advanced reading (and writing) skills.

If a student is in 6th, 8th, 10th grade and still needs basic phonics
and word-identification work, it should not fall on the history or
science teacher to teach those skills. I think that's asking a
little too much. (If the history teacher is armed with knowledge,
and sees an opportunity to teach those skills to students in need,
that's wonderful -- but it is not an expectation I have.) If a
secondary student is struggling with reading at that level -- the basic
word-identification, phonics level -- that student should spend one or
two elective periods per day working on those skills with reading
teachers with advanced training and expertise in that kind of
instruction.

In the content areas, teachers should be spending their time teaching
fluency (through repeated oral reading of content material EVERY DAY
until all students are reading at or beyond a grade-appropriate
criterion), vocabulary (using effective research-based strategies), and
above all comprehension (at high levels of sophistication). And,
of course, I think they are also supposed to be enhancing relevant
background knowledge in whatever domain they are teaching.

And if there is one huge favor secondary teachers can do for their
students, it is to teach them to write. Every day.
Voluminously. I can't stand getting college-age students who
still don't know how to communicate thoughts effectively through
writing. Writing builds reading fluency. Writing builds
comprehension and vocabulary. Writing and revision and editing
builds appreciation for syntax and discourse and rhetoric. I am
just barely cynical enough to believe that teachers do not expect
writing from their students every day because they don't want to grade
that many papers every day.

Anyway, like I said, you probably won't like my advice, but there it
is. I know we want to believe that every teacher is a reading
teacher, and I do believe that. But secondary content-area
teachers should not be expected to teach basic reading skills.
They should further the literacy development of their students in
grade-appropriate ways.